As an immigrant we often have conflicting feelings about home. Where is our home? What is the feeling of being home? Is it the people? Places? Smells? As an experience that is very subjective I can’t answer these questions for others. For us, the answer varies and is sometimes all of it, while other times none of it. This is where our multiplicity (DID) can show up fairly strongly. Some of us have vivid memories, thoughts and feelings about how home was unsafe, while others only have loving, warm and tender associations to it. There’s also plenty of us that can hold both realities as true ones.
Having conflicting feelings about home isn’t something unique to those of us with dissociated parts. The difference we seem to feel is the intensity and lack of understanding we can hold towards each other. How do you tell a 10-year-old part of you that their missing of their mommy isn’t good enough to go home for? While also reassuring the 6-year-old part of you that was abused that they won’t ever have to return there? Let’s complicate the intense push and pull further by naming that this body we all exist in is transgender. Specifically, a gender queer body, with many of our parts experiencing gender differently.
When I say we can’t go home, I’m largely referring to the visibly queer and genderqueer body that would be very unsafe if we were to return to our first home. We have been masking or hiding so much of ourselves our entire life — some consciously and other’s completely out of awareness. The ability to mask, or hide is a time honored survival strategy. If I can be as small as possible, maybe I won’t be noticed. If I look completely plain maybe no one will see me. If I stand, speak and gesture the way others around me are then I can blend into the background. If I believed in any form of system, institution or abuse of power I think I would make a great spy (topic for another day?).
As a genderqueer person we decided to take steps to feel comfortable in our body (as much as possible). This has meant increased visibility and responses ranging from confusion to disgust to anger. People who only see binary cisgender people as normal tend to see the ways in which we can’t be put in a box. So, we stand out more. We can survive this standing out more because we exist in a place where we have more privilege and ability to stay safe. We exist on land (stolen and colonized) where this is more normalized than it is at home. We can’t go home, because we would be in very real danger.
In therapy we try to sift through the thoughts and feelings of all of our parts to get a sense of what each of us needs. Most of the time everyone’s needs come down to a desire for some form of safety. In some therapeutic settings the identification of these needs and the consequent meeting of them (not nearly as simple as it sounds) is where the work ends. A more nuanced view of this work will also explore the impact both held and perceived identities has had on all of our experiences, as well as our processing of these experiences.
So, we can’t go home and because we can’t, we want to more. Maybe one day? Maybe some of us can go home. Probably not. This is where we all hold grief — of all the ways we can’t, haven’t and won’t be safe.
This is for everyone out there who knows just how complicated all of this is. For everyone who is told to simplify it, themselves, to be more digestible, more palatable. I see you. Your ability to hold that complexity, even when it’s made to feel crazy-making, is a superpower.
